Doing Our Duty To Be Ever Informed

(I realize that sounds like the title of a high school civics class, but it's the best I can do.)

It’s been awhile since I found out what Paul Craig Roberts is up to (the former Assistant Secretary of the Treasury under Ronnie Baby), but I checked today (here), and he confirms what we already knew…

The American print and TV media have never been very good. These days, they are horrible. If a person intends to be informed, he must turn to foreign news broadcasts, to Internet sites, to foreign newspapers available on the Internet or to alternative newspapers that are springing up in various cities.

…

It is the same propagandistic American print and TV media that have rationalized President Bush's illegal invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan based on seven years of lies and deception.

It is the same media that today provide only Israeli propaganda as "coverage" of the Israeli war crimes in Gaza.

…

When the truth cuts against the position of the U.S. government, conservatives see it as "liberal."

When propaganda supports the government's lies, conservatives see it as "patriotic."

…

The public is slowly catching on, and the print media are slowly dying. The New York Times, Chicago Tribune and Los Angeles Times are all on the ropes to one extent or another.

Americans are still subjected to Fox "News" and CNN propaganda piped into airport waiting rooms, doctors' offices and exercise centers. It is very much the situation that George Orwell describes in "1984."

People ask me where they can get reliable information. I tell them that their goal cannot be reached without commitment of their time.

People who have access to television services that provide English language foreign broadcasts, such as Iran's Press TV, Russia Today or Al Jazeera, can get news and insights from those parts of the world demonized by the U.S. media.

The BBC World Service still reports facts while covering itself by providing the views of the U.S., British and Israeli governments.

Both the Asia Times and Israeli newspapers such as Haaretz can be read online in English. There are other such newspapers, and all of them provide information that Americans will never see in their own media. Any American newspaper that was as truthful about the Israeli government as Haaretz would be closed down.

The only U.S. print media with which I am familiar in which some honest reporting can be found on a regular basis is the McClatchy papers.

Given this, I think this post from Editor and Publisher Online is fortuitous; it tells us that veteran Boston Globe journalist Charles Sennott is starting a new venture called GlobalPost.com, which…

…will offer regular dispatches for an American audience to supplement coverage from the AP, Reuters and other news organizations still covering the world. GlobalPost also will sell stories to papers to run in print or online.

"We cannot cover every plane crash or be there for every press conference," Sennott said. "What we can do is have a network of talented writers who live in the places they write and who deliver stories that are comparable to a metro newspaper's columnist, stories that connect the dots, that give you a sense of a place in a relatively short space."

At launch, Boston-based GlobalPost will span nearly 50 countries, including Brazil, Indonesia and other regions that Sennott believes are undercovered in American media. Reporters also will be concentrated in key emerging markets like China and India.

I think this addresses the “open source” idea that Dan Froomkin of the WaPo notes here among his list of recommendations on how he believes Google can help the news business in this country to survive (definitely some good ideas there).

There are a lot of good sites out there noted by both Froomkin and Roberts that deserve our support if we’re going to obtain the information we need to develop intelligent viewpoints and make decisions in our best interest and that of our country.

Update 1/13/09: The fact that this asshat even gets the time of day from anyone is way beyond a joke.